Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer wrote. "The removal of Leap (which operates the well-known brand Cricket) from the marketplace is troubling, because its low-cost, prepaid price plans are particularly attractive to low-income consumers.

Wouldn't a low-income person, as an example, go for Advantage Wireless?

Well, AT&T's prepaid AIO brand actually has pretty great service and plans--totally unlike the typical post-paid service. And they actually dropped prices down not that long ago (maybe in anticipation of the Cricket merger).

If they keep up with the same level of service and rates, then I'd be very happy with them.

"A call’s time begins when you press the send button. And, a call’s time ends after you press the end button and your phone’s signal to disconnect is received by the network and the call disconnect signal is confirmed."

So if I call a landline with no answering machine and let it ring for an hour then hang up, no cost, but if somebody answers after all that ringing, AT&T makes bank? Or are they charging for calls that are never connected too?

We've asked AT&T if it will continue with Cricket's existing data collection practices or change them to match AT&T's. As the acquisition just closed yesterday, any changes may not have been rolled out yet. An AT&T spokesperson told Ars that "it's just too early to know."

The spokesperson then began laughing hysterically while chugging kitten blood from a diamond-encrusted goblet.

These types of buyouts never work as the buyer says they will. Just ask comcast and the 2018 date to not discriminate data. What happened to any antitrust laws. Since Bush 2, we haven't seen any(maybe Sprint and Tmobile) but nothing after the fact. These huge corporations are destroying our country buy buying everything that causes true competition.

How is the FCC actually pushing for competition by allowing all this consolidation to occur. This problem is getting worse not better. Another fail on the part of the FCC and proof they are firmly in the hands of those they are suppose to regulate.

on one hand, hooray for one fewer cdma company (if everyone was GSM competition would be a bit more meaningful in the US), but on the other hand, sad to see a decent little company get sucked* up by a megacorp.

These types of buyouts never work as the buyer says they will. Just ask comcast and the 2018 date to not discriminate data. What happened to any antitrust laws. Since Bush 2, we haven't seen any(maybe Sprint and Tmobile) but nothing after the fact. These huge corporations are destroying our country buy buying everything that causes true competition.

How is the FCC actually pushing for competition by allowing all this consolidation to occur. This problem is getting worse not better. Another fail on the part of the FCC and proof they are firmly in the hands of those they are suppose to regulate.

The revolving door in Washington has FCC employing exclusively former Telecom/Cable lobbyists, politicians becoming lobbyists, and all manner of mixing of the former. All 3 sides play for the same team, regulators, lobbyists and politicians - they are all the same people now. What a mockery of a republic we have become.

"A call’s time begins when you press the send button. And, a call’s time ends after you press the end button and your phone’s signal to disconnect is received by the network and the call disconnect signal is confirmed."

So if I call a landline with no answering machine and let it ring for an hour then hang up, no cost, but if somebody answers after all that ringing, AT&T makes bank? Or are they charging for calls that are never connected too?

I would like to hear their answer to this. Maybe you should email the journalist at the Washington Post with this question.

"A call’s time begins when you press the send button. And, a call’s time ends after you press the end button and your phone’s signal to disconnect is received by the network and the call disconnect signal is confirmed."

So if I call a landline with no answering machine and let it ring for an hour then hang up, no cost, but if somebody answers after all that ringing, AT&T makes bank? Or are they charging for calls that are never connected too?

They're charging you for the call regardless of whether it was answered or not.

I got a prepaid ATT feature phone as my first ever cell. I assumed calls were charged when the other end answered. I thought the billing was hosed up when I would get charged an extra $0.25 (it was a shitty plan) when I knew the call only lasted less than a minute.

So, I called their customer service. Tehy said the call time begins when you press send. It ends when you hang up. So, if someone on the other end takes 30 seconds to pick up, and the call lasts 45 seconds ... I'm going to get billed for a 1:15s call, not a 45s call. If the person doesn't pick up, I still get billed for the 30s, b/c I called someoen. And, the minutes are rounded up. So, that 1:15s call is rounded up to 2:00.

"Cricket keeps the bare minimum necessary to provide you with telephone service," Soghoian said in that 2012 talk. "This is not the norm. The norm in the telephone industry is to keep lots and lots of data. For example, AT&T keeps records of who you call and who calls you for between 5 and 7 years. Many telephone companies also keep information about where you've been, historical information about the towers your phone connected to for periods of several years."

Unlike a landlines, cell phones take up (an admittedly small amount) of spectrum regardless of whether a call is actually completed.

The most expensive (for the carrier) part of a cell call is the link between phone and tower. And since they're still using voice protocols for phone calls (rather than voice over data(e.g. VoIP, VoLTE), their billing system can't distinguish between the voice data of a connected call and the (much tinier) status signal of an uncompleted connection.

Given the antiquated nature of their protocols, I'm surprised users don't get billed for the link status traffic phones send out to detect if service is available and what it's quality is.

Yeah, it's messed up, and these companies really need to update. Unfortunately, these companies are huge, with thousands of employees, and that means a massive inertia against change. And it doesn't take much to convince an exec to stick with a system that makes more money for the company, and is already paid for than it's replacement which costs a significant amount of time and money.

It's slightly OT here but I'd be curious if T-Mobile and AT&T's postpaid accounts operate similarly to the prepaid scenario reported by the WSJ. While I'm on an unlimited plan, if it's something in the network code that's causing this, it may not really be the fault of the companies in question at all.

"A call’s time begins when you press the send button. And, a call’s time ends after you press the end button and your phone’s signal to disconnect is received by the network and the call disconnect signal is confirmed."

So if I call a landline with no answering machine and let it ring for an hour then hang up, no cost, but if somebody answers after all that ringing, AT&T makes bank? Or are they charging for calls that are never connected too?

My cell phone is broken. The battery is removed from it for good measure. I have voice mail for it. To retrieve my voice mail I call my cell phone from a land line and punch a few numbers in.

Do you think they charge minutes on my cell phone for that? They certainly do!

The most expensive (for the carrier) part of a cell call is the link between phone and tower. And since they're still using voice protocols for phone calls (rather than voice over data(e.g. VoIP, VoLTE), their billing system can't distinguish between the voice data of a connected call and the (much tinier) status signal of an uncompleted connection.

Wow, I never imagined that. In most of Europe laws were established a few years ago that forced mobile carriers to bill by the second. And guess what, it works. Being the same type of networks as AT&T (GSM), I wonder why AT&T "can't" technically do it.

That actually enables rudimentary communication between people without using any money, which I used a lot when I was a poor graduate student on a pre-paid plan. One would usually tell someone you were meeting "I'll let you know when I get there by dialing your phone number, but don't pick up", and we would do this all the time to let people know basic ideas like "I'm here', 'I'm got home', or even 'I'm thinking of you'. Anyway, I always wondered why people in the US did not use that trick!

Wow, I never imagined that. In most of Europe laws were established a few years ago that forced mobile carriers to bill by the second. And guess what, it works. Being the same type of networks as AT&T (GSM), I wonder why AT&T "can't" technically do it.

Trying to get AT&T to bill by the second would be like trying to get Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to admit he lied to Congress and the American people.

AT&T only cares about 3 things, profits, shareholders, and themselves. They can give two shits less about customers, quality customer service (hello Philippines), and competitive pricing with out some incentive for themselves. You'd think keeping people from switching carriers by offering better pricing would be an incentive. But its not, at least not unless Verizon does something first (like trying to shut off the PSTN)

Quote:

something Verizon tried to do in hurricane-ravaged Fire Island until backing down in the face of regulatory pressure

Well, AT&T's prepaid AIO brand actually has pretty great service and plans--totally unlike the typical post-paid service. And they actually dropped prices down not that long ago (maybe in anticipation of the Cricket merger).

If they keep up with the same level of service and rates, then I'd be very happy with them.

Same. We've only been with them for a short time, but we've really enjoyed our service with Aio. Hopefully they don't end up a casualty of this merger.

The most expensive (for the carrier) part of a cell call is the link between phone and tower. And since they're still using voice protocols for phone calls (rather than voice over data(e.g. VoIP, VoLTE), their billing system can't distinguish between the voice data of a connected call and the (much tinier) status signal of an uncompleted connection.

Wow, I never imagined that. In most of Europe laws were established a few years ago that forced mobile carriers to bill by the second. And guess what, it works. Being the same type of networks as AT&T (GSM), I wonder why AT&T "can't" technically do it.

That actually enables rudimentary communication between people without using any money, which I used a lot when I was a poor graduate student on a pre-paid plan. One would usually tell someone you were meeting "I'll let you know when I get there by dialing your phone number, but don't pick up", and we would do this all the time to let people know basic ideas like "I'm here', 'I'm got home', or even 'I'm thinking of you'. Anyway, I always wondered why people in the US did not use that trick!

Actually we did 40 years ago. After a long drive home from visiting relatives you would place a collect call to their home. The relative would not accept the charges and thus no billing took place, but they knew you arrived home safely!

The revolving door in Washington has FCC employing exclusively former Telecom/Cable lobbyists, politicians becoming lobbyists, and all manner of mixing of the former. All 3 sides play for the same team, regulators, lobbyists and politicians - they are all the same people now. What a mockery of a republic we have become.

A bit like the Roman Republic eh

All the clear comparisons are there that Rome suffered from as well during its collapse -> Increase in cost of elections, politics is a road to wealth, continuous war (U.S. spends more on defense than any country), foreign lobbyists, profits internally and overseas shape government policy (corporations have increasing influence over elections - I.E., the marriage of government and corporation, AKA Fascism), the destruction of the middle class, rome used many methods to reduce power of common citizens (as in the U.S., a vote is meaningless, as both parties are bought and collude with one another while pretending to have the citizen's interests at heart), politics in Rome became extremely polarized (the super rich and the "common people").

The only difference really in this modern Era of Empire and Corporate Oligarchy, people are genuinely aware of these issues and take it seriously (the common people... mostly). Only time will tell.

The revolving door in Washington has FCC employing exclusively former Telecom/Cable lobbyists, politicians becoming lobbyists, and all manner of mixing of the former. All 3 sides play for the same team, regulators, lobbyists and politicians - they are all the same people now. What a mockery of a republic we have become.

A bit like the Roman Republic eh

All the clear comparisons are there that Rome suffered from as well during its collapse -> Increase in cost of elections, politics is a road to wealth, continuous war (U.S. spends more on defense than any country), foreign lobbyists, profits internally and overseas shape government policy (corporations have increasing influence over elections - I.E., the marriage of government and corporation, AKA Fascism), the destruction of the middle class, rome used many methods to reduce power of common citizens (as in the U.S., a vote is meaningless, as both parties are bought and collude with one another while pretending to have the citizen's interests at heart), politics in Rome became extremely polarized (the super rich and the "common people").

The only difference really in this modern Era of Empire and Corporate Oligarchy, people are genuinely aware of these issues and take it seriously (the common people... mostly). Only time will tell.

One other difference. Corrupt politicians (and the rare good ones) in ancient Rome were more susceptible to impeachment by knife in back, as opposed to golden parachute get out of office tactics.

Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer wrote. "The removal of Leap (which operates the well-known brand Cricket) from the marketplace is troubling, because its low-cost, prepaid price plans are particularly attractive to low-income consumers.

Wouldn't a low-income person, as an example, go for Advantage Wireless?